Mr. Paul Reid:

I fully respect that the role of the Deputy, as a member of the Committee of Public Accounts, and all the committee members, is to carry out due diligence and assessments of spend. We fully respect that role. However, I will make a few comments. First of all, no, we do not throw caution to the wind and, no, we did not blow any funds. What we did do is operate in an environment that certainly was more high-risk. This is not just for Ireland. EU-approved procurement rules were relaxed on the basis of the pandemic. There was a world demand in excess of supply. If members look beyond our country, they will see export bans were implemented by many providers of PPE and ventilators across the world. The Governor of New York-----